/ 



THE 

^'SCOTCH=IRISH" 5HIBB0LETH 

ANALYZED AND REJECTED 

WITH SOME REFERENCE TO THE 

PRESENT " ANGLO-SAXON " 

COMEDY 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 
Published by the American-Irish Historical Society 

1898 



THE 



"SCOTCH-IRISH" SHIBBOLETH 



ANALYZED AND REJECTED 



WITH SOME REFERENCE TO 

THE PRESENT "aNGLO-SAXON " COMEDY 



BY 



JOSEPH SMITH 

SHCRETARY OF THE POLICE COMMISSION, LOWELL, MASS. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN-IRISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

1898. 






'^ 






PUBLICATION 



American-Irish Historical Society. 



Number 5. 



I N DEX 



Page 

Allegheny Region 14 

America 3, 10, 15, 16, 17 

American Antiquarian Society. . 22 

American Constitution 5 

American History 2, 14 

American-Irish Historical So- 
ciety 1 , 1 9, 20 

American Revolution 3, 10, 14 

Anglican Church 24 

" Anglo-Saxon," The ... .2, 4, 14, 19 

Antrim, Ireland 9 

Antrim, N. H 21 

Barry, Jack 12 

Cabot 5 

Canobie Lake, N. H 2, 4 

CarroUs, The 12 

Celts, The 23 

Charitable Irish Society (Boston) 

21, 22 

Collins 21 

Columbus 5 

Commonwealth, The 17 

Constitution, The American .... 5 

Cork, Ireland 26 

Coronado 5 

Cortez 5 

Cotton Mather 5 

Cromwell 17 

Danes, The 23 

Declaration of Independence . . 5 

Donaghadee 9 

Down, Ireland 9 

Dublin, Ireland 26 

Dublin, N. H 21 

Dutch, The 5, 11, 23, 24 

Elizabeth, Queen 7, 23 

Emmet 19 

England, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 20, 23, 25 

English Cavaliers 14 

English Puritans 14 

Ericson 5 

Fiske, Prof. John, 

I, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 24. 26 
France 23, 25 



Page 

French, The 2,4,5, i°» ^^» ^^' '^ 

Froude 9 

Germans 4, 5, 14, 16 

Germany 23 

Great Britain 3. 24 

Green, Samuel Swett 22 

Hessians, The 10 

Highlanders, The 6, 7, 21 

Holland 23 

Hudson 5 

Huguenots 18, 19 

Ireland .. .3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16 
17, 20, 21, 22, 23 

Irish Presbyterians 21 

Irish Republic 22 

James Stuart of Scotland 7, 8 

Knox, John 24 

Lafayette • 5. 19 

Leinster, Province of 26 

Limerick, Ireland 26 

Linehan, John C 17, 21, 22 

Lodge, Henry Cabot 18, 19, 22 

London 8 

London Guilds 8 

Londonderry, Ireland 9 

Londonderry, N. H 21, 22 

Lowlander, The 6, 7, 8, 21 

Macintosh, Rev. John S., 

6, 7, 8, 10, II 

McGregor, Rev. Mr 21 

McManuses I5> 25 

McMasters i 

McNeill, Gen. John 22 

Mayflower, The 5 

Miles Standish 5 

Moore, Thomas • 12 

Motley's "Rise of the Dutch 

Republic " 23 

Munster, Province of 26 

Murphys 15, 25 

Murray, Thomas Hamilton. • . .20, 22 

New England 13.15 

New Hampshire 2, 17,21, 22 

O'Briens, The 12 



(V) 



VI 



Page 

O'Sullivans, The 13 

" Old Virginia and Her Neigh- 
bors," Fiske's 14 

Parkman i 

Penn, William 5 

Pennsylvania 2, 4 

Pere Marquette 5 

Petty, Sir W il, 17 

Philadelphia 6 

Plantation, The 7 

Plunkett, Archbishop 23 

Plymouth Rock 5 

Portsmouth, N. H 22 

Presbyterians, 9, 13, 16, 21, 23, 24, 25 

Putnam, Eben 20 

Revolution, The American. .3, 10, 14 

Rochambeau 5 

Roche, James Jeffrey 18 

Roosevelt i 

Saxons 23 

Schuylkill 6 

Scotland, 

3.6,7,8,9, 12,20,21,23,24,25 



Page 

Scots, The 7, 9, 18, 23, 25 

Scotch-Irish Society. ..r, 2, 3, 11, 16 

Stark's Rangers 22 

Stewart, Rev. Andrew^ 9, 15, 23 

Stuyvesant 5 

St. Patrick's Day 3, 22, 26 

St. Patrick's Lodge of Masons.. 22 

Sullivan, John 12 

Sullivan, Owen 12 

Tennessee 2, 4 

Thompson, Robert Ellis 21 

Ulster, Province of 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 

10, II, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 25, 26 
United Irishmen, Society of. ... 10 

United States 4, 6, 13 

Virginia 14 

Walloons n, 24 

Walter Scott 7 

Washington 5 

Waterford, Ireland 26 

" Winning of the West," Roose- 
velt's I 

Winthrop 5 



BY WAY OF PREFACE. 



In these latter days of the Nineteenth Century we are hearing a great deal 
about this race and that; we are being told of the virtue and gemus of this 
one, of the vice and incapacity of that; and our ears are bombarded with 
clamor and claptrap as wearisome as it is nonsensical. It is just as well 
when these matters come before us to keep cool and make use of such com- 
mon sense as God has endowed us with. The ponderous nonsense wasted on 
the Teutonic, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon races means absolutely nothmg when 
analyzed; it represents as a rule the vanity or prejudice of the writer and his 
clientele ; and the terminology of " race " is as misleading as it is unscientific 
The number of writers who bring to history and ethnology the same cool, 
scientific spirit that a botanist or geologist brings to plants and strata can be 
counted on the fingers of one hand. The average historian seems to hold the 
present responsible for the past, instead of admitting the common sense logic 
that the past is responsible for the present; and starting with this stupid 
inversion he insists upon defending the crimes and blunders of ages long gone 

to their account. , , t^ 

Our knowledge of the different " races " which peopled early Europe is as 
vague and fragmentary as our knowledge of the people of Atlantis. The 
sources of our knowledge appear to be a few allusions in the works of classic 
writers who either got their information at second hand from the officers and 
soldiers serving in the armies of Greece and Rome, or, as camp followers, 
from the tribes they came in contact with, whose speech they were usually 
ignorant of, and whose antecedents they knew nothing about. As well might 
some modern writer seek to base a scientific theory of the origin, language 
name etc., of the American races, upon the story of some vagrant Spanish 
soldier, returning from the plunder of a Mexican town, or the exploration of 
some tropical river. Certainly, the soldiers of Cortez and Alvarado were as 
learned, observant, and inteUigent as those of Alexander and Cssar, and their 
opportunities for research and study as numerous and satisfactory. 

While fascinating and stimulating to the imagination, the attempt to extract 
light from an age of black disorder and historic chaos, to illumine ethnolog- 
ical theories, is as vain as it is unprofitable. 

The human nucleii that have made history as we know it were nations, 
not races. Groups of men, composed of various fragments of tribes, super- 
imposed upon or mingled with the original occupants of certain geographical 
limits, forming a body that through environment, climate, war, peace, economic 

(vii) 



Vlll 

conditions, and the mutations of time and circumstances, became a homo- 
geneous whole. Thus in the stress and hurly-burly of the centuries were 
formed the French, German, Italian, Spanish, Irish, English, and other groups 
of nations, out of the same human tribal elements, and hammered into shape 
by the changing conditions they were subjected to and the different experi- 
ences they underwent. 

In the formation of what is somewhat vaguely termed " national character," 
the influence of the original elements of the nation — the racial disjecta — 
was trifling as compared with the experiences undergone in reaching the stage 
of homogeneity. The fighting strength or weakness of a people in the bar- 
barous stage gave them war or peace, security or insecurity. The presence of 
a strong leader, with a genius for organization and battle, usually meant a 
stable government and comparative peace, with the complementary benefits of 
security, agriculture, industry, increase in population, and a measure of civili- 
zation; weak and inefficient leadership meant contrary results. The two 
conditions are illustrated by Norman and Saxon England, the American and 
Spanish Republics, Austria and Turkey. 

The solemn nonsense written about Irish, English, French, German, and 
other national characters, the superiority of this one over that, the genius of 
such a one and the incapacity of some other, is a mere waste of time. Wis- 
dom or folly is peculiar to no nation; virtue and vice are the incidents of 
humanity. Bravery, patriotism, self-sacrifice, love of family, devotion to altar 
and hearthstone, are as common in Peru and Persia, Holland and Hindostan, 
as in France and England, America and Germany. Nothing, in fact, is so 
shallow, misleading, and mischievous as the application of sonorous generali- 
zations to matters like nationalities. They sound well, but they really mean 
nothing. 

The processes which produced the different nations of Europe, under the 
most favorable conditions, are on this continent making the American nation. 
.The splinters and fragments of westward sweeping Asian tribes made the 
Frenchman, the Englishman, and the others of Europe; and men from all 
the countries of Europe, landing here and commingling, are making the 
American. The children of the German, Frenchman, Irishman, and English- 
man, subjected to the same experiences of education, training, and opportunity, 
are made into Americans, — and what man, ignorant of their antecedents, 
could say which was the son of France, which the child of Ireland or England? 
With these few simple premises in view, the racial clamor of the hour 
seems trivial, silly, and unworthy of people endowed with ordinary common 
sense. 

JOSEPH SMITH. 
Lowell, Mass., Aug. 15, 1898. 



THE "SCOTCH-IRISH" SHIBBOLETH, 

ANALYZED AND REJECTED. 



The organization of the American-Irish Historical 
Society was completed none too soon, if we are to take 
note of the mass of printed matter which, under the mis- 
leading title of history, is being foisted on the American 
public in ever-increasing volume. 

With few exceptions, — Parkman, McMasters, Fiske, 
Roosevelt, and others, — the American historian has been 
a provincial in thought, exploiting his clan and magnifying 
his ism, and having but the faintest conception of the 
scope, purpose, and spirit of history, or of the true and 
scientific character of the historian. He was simply a 
partisan, a special pleader, glorifying some particular ele- 
ment in the country, ignoring or decrying all others, and 
seemingly incapable of doing ordinary justice even to the 
common enemy. 

Yet while this defect is happily absent from the modern 
school of historians, — witness Roosevelt's admirable work, 
"The Winning of the West," — we still have streams of 
literary contributions to history, flowing from various 
obscure sources, as amazing as they are grotesque and 
absurd ; amazing, because received and accepted gravely as 
history ; grotesque, because of their strange deductions ; 
absurd, because of their transparent ignorance of even plain 
and undisputed facts of history. 

The proceedings of that remarkable but already disin- 
tegrating body which calls itself the Scotch-Irish Society, 



have added to the gayety, if not the knowledge, of nations, 
and have furnished food for the scoffer and the wag for a 
dozen years. Here is a body with a well-grounded grievance 
and an empty treasury of knowledge, which has been 
laboring as strenuously for years to pervert history and 
publish misinformation as any of the old-school historians. 

Starting with the patent fact that much of American his- 
tory has been written to glorify England and the bogus 
"Anglo-Saxon" as the source and author of all the good 
things in American life, this Scotch-Irish Society swung 
the pendulum in the other direction, refusing all credit 
to the English, giving no recognition to the Dutch, and 
ignoring the French entirely. Worse still, they claimed 
everything for a race which they themselves had created, and 
which they christened with the ridiculous title of Scotch- 
Irish. The average Scotchman and Irishman seemed to 
be in the dark about it : what it was or where it came 
from puzzled ethnologists ; we had to be content with the 
information that it was a miracle-working, marvellous 
people, having all human virtues and many heavenly halos, 
and that it was discovered simultaneously somewhere in 
New Hampshire or Pennsylvania, and in a similarly definite 
locality in Tennessee. Its saints and heroes appeared to 
have a penchant for Irish names and Calvinistic religions ; 
and its prophets and scribes ranged in obscurity from a 
Morrison, of Canobie Lake, N. H., to a host of librarians, 
professors and politicians afflicted with cacoethes scribe7idi. 

The society which discovered this race — possibly in the 
graves of the mound builders — saw visions, fulminated 
annual pronunciamentos, and appeared to have an abnor- 
mal admiration for the Ulsterman, attributing virtues to 
him that might even make that humorless individual roar 
with Homeric laughter. 



* 
* * 



In time we came to learn, deviously and by expert inter- 
pretation, that the " vScotch-Irish " were the descendants 
of the Irish who emigrated from Ireland, especially Ulster, 
in the eighteenth century, and that their trademark was 
Protestantism or public prominence. This, of course, 
simplifies matters. 

It is certainly true that a large emigration flowed out of 
Ulster into America during the eighteenth century, even 
after the Revolution ; but the people who so emigrated 
were Irish, — plain, strong-limbed, angry, English-hating 
Irish, who came over the stormy Atlantic with a thorough 
detestation of England and a hearty contempt of Scotland, 
and all the tyranny, robbery, oppression, and civil, relig- 
ious, and political proscription Great Britain represented. 

They and their fathers had lived in Ireland and loved 
Ireland ; and if the habits, customs, loves, hates, ideas, 
and thoughts gained in an Irish atmosphere, on Irish soil, 
make Irishmen, these people were Irish. They called 
themselves Irish ; the English on American soil called 
them Irish and banned them as Irish ; they named their 
settlements after Irish towns ; they founded societies which 
they called Irish ; they celebrated St. Patrick's Day in 
true Irish fashion, and seemed to have no fear that a day 
would come when a ridiculous association would call them 
and their children by any other title. Stranger yet, the 
men who remained behind in Ulster have yet to learn the 
startling information that they are " Scotch-Irish." 

At first blush one might account for the new name 
on the plain ground of crass ignorance ; but the fact that 
the members of the Scotch-Irish society read and write 
presupposes some intelligence and perhaps knowledge, 
and compels us to seek the raison d'etre in other causes. 
The only reasonable and plausible cause must be looked 
for in pure, bald religious arrogance and intolerance, and 



a wish to separate the Irish race into two clans on religious 
grounds, — the Catholic or Irish-Irish, and the Protestant or 
Scotch-Irish, This looks like the attribution of mean 
motives to men, but no other explanation presents itself. 
And if this sort of logic is good there is no reason why 
the Turks should not be called Moors, for both profess 
Moslemism ; or why the French, Spaniards, and Italians 
should not be called Irishmen, since all are in religion 
Catholics. Such primary school logic is good as far as it 
goes ; but it does n't go far, even in Pennsylvania, Tennes- 
see, or Canobie Lake. 



* 

* * 



A certain other class of writers has been exploiting the 
" Anglo-Saxon " race, ascribing to it virtues and attributes 
almost divine. But as Anglo-Saxonism has in the end 
proved to be merely John Bullism, sensible people have 
turned the mythical animal over to after-dinner speakers 
and emotional parsons. The passing of the Anglo-Saxon, 
however, has left an aching void in the hearts and emotions 
of certain people who wanted a " race " of their own to brag 
about. They would n't have the Anglo-Saxon at any price ; 
they were not Germans or French or Italians or Spanish; 
they fought shy of the Scotch ; they shrieked at the Irish, 
and they apparently did not understand that the term 
American was good enough for anybody. In this hysteri- 
cal crisis they invented that ethnical absurdity, the Scotch- 
Irishman, and Scotch-Irish race. Just what the Scotch-Irish 
race is, who the Scotch-Irish are, where they come from, 
what they look like, where their habitat is, are questions 
that no fellow seems able to answer. 

In recent years the people of the United States have 
been favored with a series of congresses of respectable and 
worthy citizens, who have assembled to glorify this new 
" race." It is not out of place to say that the proceedings 



and addresses of these Scotch-Irish congresses have been 
published, and they are simply delicious, the best examples 
of unconscious humor in the language. The fun-loving 
American people should not miss them. I have before me 
the volume of the second congress, held in 1890, — the race 
is quite a recent discovery, being coeval with the microbe, — 
and I find its contents delightful. 

The perusal of this interesting work of fiction compels 
me to say that the history of the settlement and making of 
the Republic should be rewritten at once in the interest of 
truth. Such impostors as the English, Irish, French, 
Dutch, Germans, and Spaniards should be exposed at once. 
For generations we have been wasting our admiration and 
love on the old humbugs who landed at Plymouth Rock 
from the rickety " Mayflower " ; we have been tricked into 
respect and reverence for William Penn ; we have allowed 
ourselves to believe that the idle gentry who settled 
Virginia were fellows of parts ; we have even been led 
slyly to cherish admiration for such frauds as the French 
voyagers, the Spanish conquerors and the stout old Dutch 
burghers. But that is all over ; the illusion has vanished. 
Columbus, Cortez, Coronado, Penn, Cabot, Hudson, Stuy- 
vesant, Ericson, Cotton Mather, Winthrop, Miles Standish, 
Washington, Lafayette, Rochambeau, Pere Marquette, and 
all the rest of them were Scotch-Irishmen, whatever popu- 
lar misrepresentation may say they were. The Scotch- 
Irish congresses have settled that with other things. 
Summed up in a sentence, the framing of the Declaration 
of Independence, the framing of the Constitution, the 
founding of the Republic, the making of our laws, the 
winning of our battles and the establishment of our 
schools, colleges, and universities, are just a few of the 
things accomplished by this marvellous race whose light 
was hidden under several bushels up to a recent period. 



Yet, while we are told what the Scotch-Irish have done 
(and we are favored with the names of a long line of 
so-called Scotch-Irishmen), the Scotch-Irish historians have 
not got down to business and told us where this glorious 
creature originated ; he is still living in some imaginary- 
region, like Prester John of old. 

* * 
Perhaps the man who comes nearest to supplying this 

aching void, and telling us who and what this marvellous, 

ethnic paragon is, is the Rev. John S. Macintosh, of 

Philadelphia, in his highly entertaining monograph styled, 

"The Making of the Ulsterman." Let us in a grave and 

reverent spirit examine this gentleman's masterpiece of 

imaginative literature. 

He opens his wonderful story with a meeting in Antrim, 
Ireland, of three men — a Lowlander (Scotch), an Ulster- 
man (Irish), and himself (an American), whom he calls a 
Scotch-Irishman, though born on the banks of the Schuyl- 
kill. He remarks feelingly, after presenting them to the 
reader : " There we were, a very evolution in history." 
They were, in fact, the three Scotch-Irish musketeers ; and 
there they sat, looking out over the Irish waters toward 
the hungry lowlands of Scotland, pitying the world, scratch- 
ing their heads thoughtfully, only remembering how they 
had made the United States, without letting anybody find 
it out. They talked, figured each other out, and said, like 
the big, brawny, red-legged Highlanders they were not : 
" Are we not the splendid men entirely ? " 

Dr. Macintosh now proceeds to mix his three muske- 
teers in order to pull the Simon-pure Scotch-Irishman out 
of the shuffle. Let us follow him slowly, without mirth, 
if possible. 

The first element in the Scotch-Irishman is the Lowland 
Scotchman. Be sure and get the real article; nothing 



else will do. Has it ever occurred to you what a remark- 
able man the Lowlander is ? Probably not. You have 
had your eye on the Highlander as the finest fruit of Scot- 
land ; but that is all romance and Walter Scott. The 
Lowlander is the man ; whether he be a hollow-chested 
Paisley weaver, a penny-scraping Glasgow huckster, or a 
black-browed Border cattle-thief. He must also be a true- 
blue Calvinist, and none of your pleasure-loving Papists or 
Episcopalians, 

Now, who was the Lowlander of Macintosh ? He was 
a mixture of Scot, Pict, Norseman, Saxon, Friesian, Briton, 
Erse, Norman, and possibly a score of other things. The 
same mixture in dogs produces the noble breed we call a 
mongrel. Continuing his analysis, the Philadelphian says 
the Scots originally came from the North of Ireland ; but 
in some way they differed from the relations they left 
behind them. How and why, the monographer doesn't 
say; but the reader will naturally conclude that it was 
because they had the bad taste to leave the fertile vales of 
Ulster for the starved Lowlands across the water. How- 
ever, we must go on. 

The Lowlander is the seedling from which sprang the 
Scotch-Irish banyan that has transformed the American 
continent. Dr. Macintosh transplants him to Ulster in 
italics, thus: "The Lowlander becomes the Ulsterman." 
We have thus made the first stage of the Scotch-Irish hegira. 

Now let us examine Ulster of the Plantation. In the 
days of Elizabeth Tudor, Ulster was a bird to pluck. 
When not engaged in robbing Spanish commerce or Dutch 
herring-boats, the Virgin Queen's courtiers plundered and 
murdered in Ireland. Ulster, by war with England and 
internecine troubles, was reduced to utter exhaustion by 
the time the venerable and dubious virgin died, and her 
throne passed to James Stuart of Scotland. 



King Jamie went to London with a fine crowd of beggarly- 
lairds at his heels, and found war-wasted Ulster on his 
hands, James Stuart was hardly an ideal king such as 
poets sing of ; but he was as good as kingdoms usually get. 
He had the tongue of a wrangling parson, the spirit of a 
tailor's apprentice, the meanness of a usurer, and the 
morals of a procuress. He went into business at once, 
and exchanged the lands of Ulster for the cash of the 
London guilds and a few Scotch concerns, the conditions 
of the contract being that they were to introduce settlers 
into the province, build fortifications, and hold the lands 
by the sword. The rights of the inhabitants were not 
considered at all ; it was simply an outrageous piece of 
spoliation, varied by murder. 

Dr. Macintosh, with a smug mixture of imagination and 
Pharisaism, tells us that this wholesale scheme of slaughter 
and robbery was a benevolent plan of God's to save the 
world, and that the day this charter of plunder and outrage 
was promulgated, April i6, 1605, must always be one of 
historic value. To mere modern laymen the shouldering 
of this cruel and perfidious piece of kingly rascality on to 
an all-wise Providence by a clergyman smacks very much 
of blasphemy. 

But we must have a genesis for the Scotch-Irishman, 
and the settlement of Ulster is the thing. 

Now the veracious parson strikes a rapid gait. The 
Lowlander, he says, was to find Ulster nothing but savage 
wilds, and was to transform it by his skill and industry into 
smiling valleys and busy towns. History advises us that 
in those days, the rudest and most wasteful agriculturists 
in Europe were those of Scotland and England. 

Having got his Lowlander into Ireland, — and the good 
man wants it understood that none but Lowlanders went 
there, — he thus apostrophizes him : " In Ulster now stands 



the transplanted Scot, the man of opportunity, of utility, 
and order, the man of law and self-respect and self-reliance, 
with a king's charter in his hand, with a king's smile 
upon him, with the cheers of England's hopeful civiliza- 
tion encouraging him," Is this not really beautiful ? 
What a poet the reverend Philadelphian is ? How Froude 
would have loved him. But once more the hard facts of 
history crop out to plague the poetic parson. Let me quote 
from a Presbyterian parson of Ulster, who was born there in 
the early days of the Plantation, and who was pastor of the 
town of Donaghadee, from 1645 to 1671. He ought to know 
something about his law-abiding. God-fearing, order-loving, 
charter-bearing neighbors, and was in a position to appre- 
ciate the hopeful civilization of England as exemplified 
in Ulster. Listen to the words of the Rev. Andrew 
Stewart : — 

"From Scotland came many, 2ind front Eitgland not a 
few ; yet all of them, generally, the sewn of both nations ^ 
who for debt or breaking or fleeing from, justice, or seeking 
shelter^ came hither, hoping to be withotit fear of man s 
jtistice in a land where there was nothing, or but little as 
yet, of the fear of God. And in a few years there flocked 
such a multitude of people from Scotland, that these 
northern counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry, etc., 
were in a good measure planted ; yet most of tJie people, as 
I said before, made up a body — and it is strange — of dif- 
ferent names, nations, dialects, tempers, breeding — and in a 
word — all void of godliness, who seemed rather to flee God 
in this enterprise than to follow their mercy ; albeit at first 
it must be remembered that they cared little for any churchy 

Thus we see that the settlers were not angels and were 
far from being wholly Scots. Ireland is the land of saints ; 
but it has never been the land of angels, Presbyterian or 
otherwise. The good parson overlooks the important fact 



10 

that a large number of English, Dutch, German, Walloon, 
and French Protestants were introduced from time to 
time into Ulster, and these with the native population went 
to make the Ulsterman. But let us go on. 

For nearly one hundred and fifty years these races lived 
in Ulster, forming the Ulsterman. Along in the middle of 
the eighteenth century, the Ulsterman began to grow tired 
of England's hopeful civilization, which was banning his 
religion, plundering his home, and destroying his indus- 
tries ; and he was emigrating to America with a heart full 
of bitterness. England called the Ulsterman an Irishman; 
he claimed that name himself, as he might well do, after 
being domiciled on the soil for generations. 

In Ireland he founded the Society of United Irishmen; in 
America he organized Irish charitable societies, and called 
his settlements by Irish names, in the darkest ignorance of 
the fact that he was a Scotch-Irishman. Even in Ulster 
to-day they have not yet discovered the Scotch-Irishman, 
though American delegates may correct this neglect. Dur- 
ing our Revolution it was difficult to get people to acknowl- 
edge kinship with the Scotch, who were damned as 
vigorously as the Hessians, as Tories and mercenaries. 
The Irish of the Revolution were plain, ordinary Irish. 

The maker of the Ulsterman dwells pathetically on the 
imaginary massacre of 1641, when a poor, unarmed peas- 
antry are alleged to have wiped out nearly two hundred 
thousand well-armed people, dwelling in towns and fortified 
places, and backed by the Government. As the population 
of all the province was hardly two hundred thousand in 
all, this massacre implies a sort of national hari-kari. 

Yet in 1656, just fifteen years after this awful slaughter, 
Dr. Macintosh says the Scotch-Irish could put forty 
thousand fighting men in the field. This is the most won- 



II 

derful case of racial fecundity on record, or it is a magnifi- 
cent piece of mendacity. Remember the figures, — forty 
thousand. Sir W. Petty, who lived and wrote for the 
Government in those days, says the estimated population 
of Ulster in 1659, — or three years after Dr. Macintosh's 
Scotch-Irish army, — was as follows : Irish, 63,350 ; Eng- 
lish, Scotch, and other aliens, 40,471 ; in all, 103,921. Now 
what has become of the army of 1656 ? Has everybody in 
Ulster become Scotch-Irish, or has that wonderful race 
developed into anthropophagi ? 

Yet upon such ridiculous matter is the whole Scotch-Irish 
theory based, foundations as unstable as water. A few 
Scotch settlers of no character, morals, or any attribute or 
instinct other than those of banditti, enter Ulster, and we 
are asked to believe that they absorbed and leavened all 
the province and later all the North American continent. 
After a century and a half all the elements, Irish, English, 
French, Dutch, and Walloons, in Ulster, have been trans- 
formed by the Scotch. This ridiculous and laughable 
absurdity has its grave side ; a number of honest, well-mean- 
ing citizens are being tricked into believing that this rub- 
bish is fact and history, because it is so stated by men who 
are reading the record of the past by their imaginations. 
There never was and never will be a Scotch-Irish race. 
The men of Ulster who came to America were Irishmen; 
their children are Americans ; if they are ashamed of the 
blood, race, or nationality of their fathers they are unworthy 
sons of their sires. 

So much for Dr. Macintosh, of Philadelphia, and his plan 
of Scotch-Irish creation. 

The people who became converts to this cult organized 
themselves into a Scotch-Irish society, with all that enthu- 
siasm with which the average American organizes anything 
that is a society or lodge of any sort, for any purpose. In 



12 

fact, when half a dozen Americans get together anywhere 
for any common purpose, whether to analyze the green 
cheese in the moon or to float a non-metallic gold mine, 
they proceed to organize themselves with officers, consti- 
tution, by-laws, resolutions, platitudes, and all the equip- 
ment of a government. The act of organization seems to 
throw the sanction of authority and law around everything 
it touches, for the American mind has had law, law, law. 
hammered into it so persistently that law has become a 
fetich in the republic, and he who will fearlessly discuss 
God and the Bible and question the authority of the sacred 
book will stand dumb before the law he has made. Organ- 
ized into a society, having presidents, secretaries, com- 
mittees, contributing brethren, a treasury, and annual 
congresses, the man of straw began to put on a look of 
reality. 

The essays of the society on the various branches of 
the Scotch-Irish " race," from the inspired pens of profes- 
sors in minor colleges, politicians, and others, were 
gravely published and the new race began its life on earth. 
It represented a triumph of mind over matter. Why it 
never joined forces with the apostles of theosophy has 
always been a puzzle ; they had a common ground of phan- 
tasm to unite on, and by timely and judicious revelations 
from Mahatmas, Scotch-Ireland or Irish-Scotland — the 
cradle of the intangible race — might have been fixed in 
the Himalayas on the roof of the world. 

In nearly all particulars the society was a success ; all 
it lacked was a few real Scotch-Irishmen to place on exhi- 
bition as a guarantee of good faith ; but these could not be 
secured. 

When John Sullivan, son of Owen O'Sullivan of 
Limerick ; Philip Sheridan, Thomas Moore, Jack Barry, 
the Carrolls, O'Briens, and men of almost pure English 



13 

lineage are grouped together under the one head of Scotch- 
Irish, we may well conclude that the children of some 
kindergarten have been allowed by their good-natured 
teachers to play at parliament. 

When we consider that one of the most gifted seers of 
the cult has solemnly laid down the simple rule, which was 
revealed to him in a vision after a mince-pie supper, — that 
all the O's are Irish-Irish and all the Macs are Scotch-Irish, 
the inclusion of the O'Briens and O'Sullivans among the 
ghost-dancers by less erudite prophets is enough to appall 
the stoutest heart. 

The fact cannot be gainsaid that the Irish-Presbyterians, 
almost to a man, were against England; but it was their 
nationality — Irish — and the sufferings entailed on them 
in Ulster, and not their Presbyterianism, that made them 
ardent rebels. If further proof were necessary, attention 
might be called to the fact that all the Scotch settlements 
in America were ultra-loyal to the British Crown, whether 
in what is now the United States or in British America. 

* * 

Prof. John Fiske of Harvard is a man whose liter- 
ary and historical contributions must be reckoned with; 
while he exhibits dogmatic tendencies in certain directions, 
he prefers to be right and sound rather than clever or 
sonorous. 

One hardly expects a New England historian to 
exert undue care to deal fairly with the Irish ; New 
England, like Old England, has not reached that growth 
where it has found that the world contains other people 
beside its own ; the New England tradition is that after 
the tragedy on Calvary the Deity substituted the New 
Englander for the Hebrew as his human choice ; and 
Professor Fiske is human enough to have the poison of his 
provincial surroundings and antecedents in his blood. 



H 

Having been taught that the Anglo-Saxon — the English- 
man and his children — had accomplished everything- great 
and good on the continent, it would have been a serious 
disillusion to have to acknowledge that England's bete noir, 
the Irish, had really done infinitely more for America than 
the Anglo-Saxon. Hence, when it is shown that certain 
men did do great deeds who were not of English origin, 
when they had Irish names and were of Irish extraction, 
it was a difficult matter to assume that these men were 
something else besides Irish ; but he has overcome this 
difficulty, if with some qualms. 

In "Old Virginia and her Neighbors," Volume II., page 
391, Prof. John Fiske says : " Until recent years little has 
been written of the coming of the so-called Scotch-Irish 
to America, and yet it is an event of scarcely less impor- 
tance than the exodus of English Puritans to New Eng- 
land and that of English Cavaliers to Virginia. It is 
impossible to understand the drift which American history, 
social and political, has taken since the time of Andrew 
Jackson, without studying the early life of the Scotch-Irish 
population of the Allegheny region, the pioneers of the 
American backwoods. I do not mean to be understood 
as saying that the whole of that population at the time of 
the Revolution was Scotch-Irish, for there was a consider- 
able German element in it, besides an infusion of English 
moving inward from the coast. But the Scotch-Irish 
element was more numerous and far more important than 
all the rest. 

" Who were the people called by this rather awkward 
compound name, Scotch-Irish .-• The answer carries us 
back to the year 161 1, when James I. began peopling 
Ulster with colonists from Scotland and the north of Eng- 
land. The plan was to put into Ireland a Protestant pop- 
ulation that might ultimately outnumber the Catholics and 



15 

become the controlling element in the country. The 
settlers were picked men and zvomcn of the most excellent 
sort. By the middle of the seventeenth century there 
were three hjmdred tJionsand of them in Ulster." 

Professor Fiske excites to mirth. His "picked men" 
were those described by the Rev. Andrew Stewart, an eye 
witness, already quoted, as " the scum of both nations 
[England and Scotland], who for debt or breaking or flee- 
ing from justice, or seeking shelter, came hither [to Ulster] 
... all void of godliness." The Rev. Mr. Stewart is a 
better authority on this subject than Professor Fiske. 

Again Professor Fiske says : " That province [Ulster] 
had been the most neglected part of the island, a wilder- 
ness of bogs and fens ; they transformed it into a garden. 
They also established manufactures of woollens and linens 
which have since been famous throughout the world. By 
the beginning of the eighteenth century their numbers 
had risen to nearly a million. Their social condition was 
not that of peasants ; they were intelligent yeomanry and 
artisans. In a document signed in 171 8 by a miscellaneous 
group of 319 men only thirteen made their mark, while 306 
wrote their names in full. Nothing like that could have 
happened at that time in any other part of the British 
Empire, hardly even in New England. 

" When these people began coming to America those 
families that had been longest in Ireland had dwelt there 
but for three generations, and confusion of mind seems to 
lurk in any nomenclature which couples them with the 
true Irish. . . . On the other hand, since love laughs 
at feuds and schisms, intermarriages between the colonists 
of Ulster and the native Irish were by no means unusual, 
and instances occur of Murphys and McManuses of the 
Presbyterian faith. It was common in Ulster to allude to 
Presbyterians as ' Scotch,' to Roman Catholics as * Irish,' 



i6 

and to members of the English Church as ' Protestants/ 
without much reference to pedigree. From this point of 
view the term ' Scotch ' may be defensible, provided we do 
not let it conceal the fact that the people to whom it 
applied are for the most part Lowland Scotch Presbyterians, 
very slightly Hibernicized in blood." 

* * 
The merest examination of this will show that Professor 

Fiske is on uncertain ground ; he is begging the question; 
his own training and education convince him that there is 
a false ring to the term " Scotch-Irish " ; the statements he 
makes or quotes show the earmarks of that organized hum- 
bug, the Scotch-Irish Society ; and he is reluctant to face 
the question squarely, and, by reversing the conventional 
concealments, evasions, and falsifications which have marked 
the writing of American history in the interest of the 
English elements, acknowledge the splendid work done by 
the Irish in America. Let us examine his statements in 
detail. 

Relative to Ulster settlement he says : " The settlers 
were picked men and women of the most excellent sort. 
By the middle of the seventeenth century there were 
300,000 of them in Ulster. The province was a wilderness 
of bogs and fens ; they transformed it into a garden. They 
also established manufactures of woollens and linens ; . . . 
they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans." These 
extracts are the amusing myths of the Scotch-Irish 
Society. We have an emigration from Scotland to Ireland 
by, say, 1650, of 300,000, with no account of the English, 
French, Walloon and German immigrants who were intro- 
duced to Ireland, and nothing said about the original 
settlers of Ulster, the Irish. In 1659, as already stated. 
Petty, a government official in Ulster, estimated the popu- 
lation as follows : Irish, 63,350 ; English, Scotch, and other 



17 

aliens, 40,571 ; a total of 103,921. It is very possible that 
Sir Petty's estimate is correct ; that he would find it very 
difficult to arrive at a correct estimate of the Irish ; and 
much more easy to get at the numbers of those who were 
naturally the English supporters. It is well to recall that 
at the date of this estimate Ireland had gone through the 
horrors of twelve years of civil war, marked by cruelty of 
the most ferocious kind ; that the Cromwellians had added 
deportation and slavery in the Americas to their other 
crimes and abominations ; that Cromwell had settled his 
own soldiers on confiscated lands ; and that he was not 
particularly partial to the Scotch, whom he had fought and 
defeated, and whose immigration he was not likely to 
encourage, at a time when they were parleying with the 
exile Charles and plotting the downfall of the Common- 
wealth. 

Professor Fiske's three hundred thousand seem to vanish 
in smoke. 

The character of the population introduced into a coun- 
try where the natives are treated as outlaws and wild 
beasts by the government is not hard to guess. It is not 
at all likely that it is going to consist of model farmers, 
expert artisans, pious, educated, peaceful men and women ; 
those kind of people usually remain at home. The adven- 
turer, the ne'er-do-well, the poor, the desperate, the home- 
less ; those are the kind willing to face the hazards of war 
and fortune in a land where the natives are hard fighters 
and haters of the government, even though exhausted by 
war. 

Hon. John C. Linehan, State Insurance Commissioner of 
New Hampshire, declares that " In these latter days a 
new school of writers has sprung up, whose pride of ances- 
try outstrips its knowledge, and whose prejudices blind 
its love of truth. With the difference in relig-ion between 



i8 

certain sections of the Irish people as a basis, they are 
bent on creating a new race, christening it ' Scotch-Irish,' 
laboring hard to prove that it is a ' brand ' superior to 
either of the two old types, and while clinging to the 
Scotch root, claim that their ancestors were different from 
the Irish in blood, morals, language, and religion. This is 
a question not difficult to settle for those who are disposed 
to treat it honestly, but, as a rule, the writers who are the 
most prolific, as well as the speakers who are the most 
eloquent, know the least about the subject, and care less, 
if they can only succeed in having their theories accepted. 
The Irish origin of the Scots is studiously avoided by 
nearly all the Scotch-Irish writers, or if mentioned at all, 
is spoken of in a manner which leaves the reader to infer 
that the Scots had made a mistake in selecting their 
ancestors, and it was the duty of their descendants, so far 
as it lay in their power, to rectify the error." 

James Jeffrey Roche, replying to an article by Henry 
Cabot Lodge, says in the Boston Pilot, July 9, 1892, ** Of 
course, if we accept Mr. Lodge's definition, that an Irish- 
man of the Protestant religion is not an Irishman, but a 
Scotchman, more particularly if he be an Englishman by 
descent, Mr. Lodge's case is proven, even though his own 
witnesses otherwise contradict him ; and equally, of 
course, a Catholic Irishman becomes a Scotchman, or 
vice versa, by simply changing his religion. 

" In his anxiety to make a point against Catholics by 
extolling the French Huguenots and 'Scotch-Irish,' Mr. 
Lodge forgets common sense, and what is worse, forgets 
common honesty. When he comes to claim especial 
glory for his own section of the country, he gives away 
his whole case by saying : ' The criticism that birthplace 
should not be the test for the classification by communi- 



■• ■ -<. ' «UA ' . T jT! . ' I.. .— .^. -«. l' .UM I IJMllLm.lUUa-/^JIUW I | 



19 

ties seems hardly to require an answer, for a moment's 
reflection ought to convince any one that no other is 
practicable,' although he hastens to add that ' place of 
birth is no test of race,' 

" Nothing is, apparently, except religion ; and the test 
of that is, whether or not it is Mr. Lodge's own brand of 
religion. We have not a word to say against the latter, 
even though in his case, unfortunately, it has not devel- 
oped an ' ability ' for counting correctly or quoting hon- 
estly. . . . Irishmen, at least, do not qualify their 
admiration of national heroes by inquiries into their 
religion. Protestant Emmet is still the idol of the Irish 
Catholic ; and we doubt if any intelligent Huguenot would 
give up his share in the glory of Catholic Lafayette." 

The main importance attaching to history written in the 
" Scotch-Irish " and " Anglo-Saxon " fashion is that it is 
poisoning the growing generations ; this falsified and fab- 
ricated history is being introduced into the schools, and a 
deliberate propaganda is being carried on to show that 
persecution and the persecutor were always right and the 
misgoverned were always wrong, and Americans are 
expected to acquiesce in this outrage. 

It is the duty of the members of the American-Irish 
Historical Society to rebuke these things wherever found ; 
to insist that nothing but the truth shall be taught in the 
public schools, and to demand that the self-respect and 
good name of the Irish and their children shall not be 
insulted. No honorable means should be left untried to 
accomplish these ends ; we are numerous enough in this 
Republic to compel the giving of what every citizen of the 
Republic is entitled to, truth and justice, and the slander- 
ers, falsifiers, and wrong-doers should be followed per- 
sistently and mercilessly until they are driven into 
obscurity by an alarmed and righteous public opinion. 



20 

The American-Irish Historical Society will be false to 
its purposes and principles if it does less than this ; if it 
does not demand squarely and positively the simple truth 
and exact justice, it has no reason for existence. Our 
numbers, wealth, influence, warrant us in refusing to be 
misrepresented in the history of the Republic, and properly 
utilized, they will enable us to punish and pillory our 
slanderers. 

Let us mete out justice, fair play, and honorable treat- 
ment to the men of all our nations, who have helped to 
make this greatest of the nations, and let us fearlessly and 
persistently demand them for ourselves. 

* * 
Thomas Hamilton Murray, writing on this subject to 

Eben Putnam, of Salem, Mass., declares : — 

" It has always been a matter of astonishment to me that 
persons who ring the changes on the ' Scotch-Irish ' dis- 
play such a superficial knowledge of the plantation of 
Ulster and of the composition of the people of that prov- 
ince. One would think that before holding forth as 
exponents of the doctrine, they would first solidly inform 
themselves as to the conditions of the period and place in 
question. . . . We of the old Irish race draw no invidious 
distinctions, but receive into brotherhood all born on Irish 
soil or of Irish parents, regardless of creed and no matter 
where their grandfather or great-grandfather may have 
come' from. . . . Why anybody of Irish birth or descent 
should try to sink his glorious heritage and seek to estab- 
lish himself as ' Scotch rather than Irish,' or why anybody 
should try to do it for him, is something difficult to under- 
stand. Ireland possesses a more ancient civilization than 
either Scotland or England. Her hagiology, her educa- 
tional institutions, her old nobility, her code of laws, her 
jurisprudence, are of much greater antiquity. 'The Irish,' 



21 



declares Collins, ' colonized Scotland, gave to it a name, a 
literature and a language, gave it a hundred kings, and gave 
it Christianity.' For additional evidence on this point, see 
Knight, Lingard, Chambers, Lecky, Venerable Bede, 
Buckle, Pinkerton, Logan, Thebaud, Sir Henry Maine, 
Freeman, the Century Dictionary of Names and other 
authorities." 

Commissioner Linehan, of New Hampshire, already 
quoted, says : — 

" In the histories of New Hampshire towns colonized by 
emigrants from Ireland, an attempt has been made by the 
writers to draw a distinction between what they term the 
' Scotch-Irish ' and the Irish. The former were, according 
to their theories, pure Scotch, mainly from the Lowlands, 
of Saxon origin, who had emigrated to Ireland, keeping 
themselves clear from all contact with the native Irish, 
from whom they differed in language, blood, morals, and 
religion, and from these people were sprung the founders 
of Londonderry, Antrim, Dublin, etc. 

" There is no evidence whatever to show that the ori- 
ginal settlers held any such opinions of themselves. The 
first pastor, Rev. Mr. McGregor, bore not a Lowland 
name, but, on the contrary, one of the proudest Highland 
names ; and mixed with the first comers were a great 
many who must, from the character of their names, have 
been of the old Irish stock, thus proving that this theory 
of not mingling with the Irish has no solid foundatTon. 
The composition of the Charitable Irish Society [Boston] 
is perhaps the best evidence of the truth of this statement. 
Their names show that they were Irish of the mixed race, 
Irish, English, and Scotch, and from first to last considered 
themselves Irish, without prefix or affix." 

That able writer, Robert Ellis Thompson, speaking of 
the early Irish Presbyterian immigration to this country, 



22 

says: "... And these immigrants brought to America 
such resentments of the wrongs and hardships they had 
endured in Ireland as made them the most hostile of all 
classes in America toward the continuance of British rule 
in this new world, and the foremost in the war to over- 
throw it. And those who remained in Ulster were not 
much better affected toward the system of rule they con- 
tinued to endure. At the close of the century we find the 
greater part of them uniting with their Roman Catholic 
countrymen for the overthrow of the monarchy and the 
establishment of an Irish republic, with the help of the 
French." 

Commissioner Linehan recalls, as an indication of how 
the pride of Irish blood prevailed among New Hampshire 
men, that between 1765 and 1770 St. Patrick's Lodge of 
Masons was organized at Portsmouth. Also we find Stark's 
Rangers on one occasion planning to celebrate the anni- 
versary of St. Patrick. At another period we see Gen. 
John McNeill, the descendant of a Londonderry settler, 
coming down to Boston and becoming a member of the 
Charitable Irish Society. 

Mr. Murray, already quoted, writing to Samuel Swett 
Green, of the American Antiquarian Society, observes 
that : — 

" Many persons who continually sing the praises of the 
so-called ' Scotch-Irish ' stand in serious danger of being 
considered not only ignorant but positively dishonest. 
Their practice is to select any or all Irishmen who have 
attained eminence in American public life, lump them 
together and label the lump ' Scotch-Irish.' ... 

" Prejudiced or poorly informed writers have made sad 
work of this Scotch-Irish business. Thus Henry Cabot 
Lodge gives the absurd definition of ' Scotch-Irish ' as 
being ' Protestant in religion and chiefly Scotch and Eng- 



lish in blood.' This has only been equalled in absurdity 
by Dr. Macintosh, who has defined this elusive element as 
'not Scotch nor Irish, but rather British.' Here we have 
two gentlemen claiming to speak as with authority, yet 
unable to agree even in first essentials." 



* 
* * 



A few years since the Protestant Archbishop Plunkett, 
of Ireland, in addressing some Presbyterian visitors, said ; 
" I hope that while we shall always be very proud of our 
imperial nationality, proud of our connection with the 
British empire, on the history of which, as Irishmen, we 
have shed some lustre in the past, and from our connection 
with which we have derived much advantage in return — 
while we are proud, I say, of our imperial nationality, let 
us never be forgetful of our Irish nationality. We may 
be descended from different races — the Danes, Celts, 
Saxons, and Scots — but we form a combined stratum of 
our own, and that is Irish, and nothing else." 

Recurring to this Presbyterian Stewart's views on his 
neighbors, his statement that people of many nations and 
dialects came out of Scotland needs an explanation. 

Motley, in his "Rise of the Dutch Republic," throws 
a great light on this subject. He says in effect that the 
religious wars of Protestant and Catholic, and the persecu- 
tions growing out of them of the ever-increasing sectaries, 
drove shoals of artisans from Germany, Holland, and 
France to England ; Elizabeth of England had troubles of 
her own, and while she quarrelled with the Pope and dis- 
puted his headship, she was jealously insistent of her own 
leadership of her State Church, and had no use for the 
pugnacious sectaries from across the Channel. In time, 
owing to the English jealousy of foreigners and rival man- 
ufacturers, and the Queen's abhorrence of rivals against 
divinely-selected kings, Elizabeth shut down on the 



24 

refugees and refused them asylum. In those days it was a 
much graver offence to insult the Majesty of earth than 
heaven. Scotland, then in the throes of religious squab- 
bles, and the game of church plundering, and under the 
practical guidance of the amiable John Knox, gave them a 
welcome as kindred spirits. When other days came, when 
Mary's head had rolled from the block at Fotheringay, 
when her wretched son was enthroned, the foreign element 
found Scotland a poor land to live in. The settlement of 
Ulster gave them their chance, and they flocked there with 
Scotchmen and Englishmen to settle down and intermarry 
and become, as all before them had become, in that Irish 
crucible, Irish. 

The forms of religious dissent driven out of Europe to 
Great Britain, like Presbyterianism, had a common basis of 
agreement in their common Calvinism, and the foreigners 
naturally drifted into that form of ecclesiastical organiza- 
tion. Few went into the Anglican State Church, and 
many of that faith drifted away from it to Catholicity and 
Presbyterianism, and it was a special subject of reproach 
later that the state beneficed clergy caused such a state of 
affairs by their indifference and greed. 

But it remains for American historians to find the terms 
race and religion synonymous, and to advise an astonished 
world that when an Irishman, Frenchman, Englishman, 
Dutchman, or Walloon adopts Presbyterianism as his 
religious faith he is at once transformed into that hyphen- 
ated hybrid, a Scotch-Irishman. This is one of the marvels 
of this inventive age. 

Before Professor Fiske — for whose talent and industry 
I have a very great respect — gives us his promised views 
on the Scotch-Irishman in his forthcoming work, " The 
Dutch and Quaker Settlements in America," let me pro- 
pound a question or two to him. 



25 

If, as is pretended, a certain number of Lowland Scotch- 
men of the Presbyterian religion accomplished so much in 
Ulster and America, why have not the great majority of 
the same people accomplished as much in their own land 
and elsewhere, when all the conditions were in their favor ? 
And again, if so much was accomplished by an Irish 
environment and an Irish racial admixture, and so little 
achieved by the pure Scot under more favorable circum- 
stances, is it not a reasonable deduction that the Irish ele- 
ment was the responsible factor in the achievement ? If 
not, why not ? 

That invader and invaded should hate each other bitterly 
is not of any particular importance as bearing on nation- 
ality ; it is the experience of all lands and races. Presby- 
terian Murphys and McManuses are no argument for 
Scotch Murphys and McManuses; it may indicate inter- 
marriage and change of religious faith ; it can't indicate a 
change of blood. The transformation of bogs and fens 
into gardens is merely a fairy story ; the bogs and fens are 
in Ulster to-day. The fertile valleys of Ulster ready to 
be entered on was the bait to catch settlers ; for the 
defeated and disheartened native Irish had been driven to 
the barren hills and bogs. 

Men as a rule don't risk life and fortune for the privilege 
of transforming bogs to gardens in a hostile country ; and, 
moreover, as Motley says, England and Scotland in that 
age had the rudest system of agriculture in Europe. The 
higher system of agriculture as well as the woollen and 
linen industries came with the skilled exiles from Holland 
and France ; and even as great a plunderer as Wentworth 
was wise enough to foster them. And I might ask, why 
didn't these marvellous Scots make their own country 
famous for woollen and linen industries, when they made 
their own laws and could snap their fingers at English 
jealousy ? 



26 



Finally, if these people were Scotch " slightly Hiberni- 
cized," why did they on their arrival in America organize 
Irish societies ? Why did they name towns and rivers 
with Irish names ? Why did they celebrate St. Patrick's 
Day rather than St. Andrew's ? 






It will pay Professor Fiske to examine into the Irish 
emigration of the eighteenth century and learn, as less 
erudite people have done, that as much of this stream 
flowed from Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Dublin, and Eng- 
lish Bristol, as from Ulster ; and that Leinster and Mun- 
ster poured in fully as many Irish to Colonial America 
as did the northern province. What he is unwittingly 
doing is setting up the abhorrent dividing Hues of religion 
and marking off the race into " Irish-Irish " and "Scotch- 
Irish " upon the line of Catholicity and Protestantism. I, 
as one of the Protestant Irish, most strenuously object ; 
the name Irish was good enough for my fathers ; their son 
is proud to wear it as they did ; and we must all insist that 
the Irish, without any qualifications, all children of a com- 
mon and well-loved motherland, shall be given their full 
measure of credit for the splendid work done by them in 
America. 



27 



THE SCOTCH-IRISHMAN IN VERSE. 

The following bits of amusing verse treating the elusive 
and intangible Scotch-Irish race appeared in the Boston 
Pilot. The shafts of the anonymous poet are sharp 
enough to pierce even the leathery hide and sappy brain 
of the chroniclers of the phantom land where dwell the 
mysterious Scotch-Irish tribes ; and they show the fun 
and derision which the solemn fabrications of the histo- 
rians of Buckramland excite in th^ Irish mind : — 

LAMENT OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH EXILE. 

Oh, I want to win me hame 

To my ain countrie, 
The land frae whence I came 

Far away across the sea; 
But I canna find it there, on the atlas anywhere, 
And I greet and wonder sair 

Where the deil can it be? 

I hae never met a man 

In a' the warld wide 
Who has trod my native Ian' 

Or its distant shores espied; 
But they tell me there 's a place where my hypothetic race 
Its dim origin can trace — 

Tipperary-on- the-Clyde . 

But anither answers : " Nae, 

Ye are verra far frae richt ; 
Glasgow Town in Dublin Bay 

Is the spot we saw the licht." 
But I dinna find the maps bearing out these pawkie chaps. 
And I sometimes think perhaps 

It has vanished out o' sight. 

Oh, I fain wad win me hame 

To that undiscovered Ian' 
That has neither place nor name. 

Where the Scoto-Irishman 
May behold the castles fair by his fathers builded there, 
Many, many ages ere 

Ancient history began. 

Calvin K. Brannigan. 



28 



THE GATHERING OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH CLANS. 

Are ye gangin' to the meetin', to the meetin' o' the clans, 

With your tartans and your pibrochs and your bonnets and brogans? 

There are Neeleys from New Hampshire and Mulligans from Maine, 
McCarthys from Missouri and a Tennessee McShane. 

Kellys, Caseys, Dunns, and Daceys, by the dozen and the score. 
And O'Ferral, of Virginia, whom the Trilbyites adore. 

There are Cochranes (born Corcoran), as polished as you please. 
And Kenyons who were Keenans, and Murfrees once Murphys. 

And we '11 sit upon the pint-stoup and we '11 talk of auld lang syne 
As we quaff the flowing haggis to our lasses' bonnie eyne. 

And we '11 join in jubilation for the thing that we are not; 
For we say we aren't Irish, and God knows we aren't Scot ! 

Calvin K. Brannigan. 

* 

* * 

Note : Some years ago the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge wrote an 
article for the " Century," entitled, " The Distribution of Ability in 
America," which was written in the customary unhappy manner of 
the " Scholar in Politics." The American article was prompted by 
and modelled after a sketch in a British quarterly purporting to do a 
similar work for Ireland and Great Britain. 

Mr. Lodge's screed was a lamentable affair, false in its premises, 
absurd in its conclusions, and marked by errors and omissions, that 
could only be attributed to haste, ignorance, or his chronic inability 
to understand that the world has contained races other than the 
Anglo-Saxon. Mr. Lodge was promptly taken to task by Mr. James 
Jeffrey Roche, editor of the Pilot^ who, taking the same sources of 
information alleged to have been consulted by Mr. Lodge, soundly 
castigated that distinguished personage and showed how " A little 
knowledge is a dangerous thing." 

Apropos of Mr. Lodge's " Distribution of Ability," he was, at the 
time of writing, a member of Congress ; and, full of the remarkable 



29 

things he fancied he had discovered, he gurgled and cackled round 
the House, imparting his marvels to all. That very clever man, the 
late Governor Greenhalge, of Massachusetts, was in Congress at the 
time and he learned of Mr. Lodge's discoveries with mischievous 
delight. Despite the fact that the two gentlemen were excellent 
friends, Mr. Greenhalge had no illusions concerning Mr. Lodge's 
limitations. When the Nahant statesman approached him with, 

" My dear Greenhalge, I have made a remarkable discovery," 

Greenhalge smiled and said, " I know you have." 

" Oh, you 've heard about it, have you ? " 

" I 've heard nothing, except that you 've written about the ' Dis- 
tribution of Ability ' ; but then, my dear fellow, I know exactly what 
you've found out and written, because I know you." 

" Oh, come now, Greenhalge," said the Nahant historian, a trifle 
nettled ; " what have I found out ?" 

"You have discovered," said Greenhalge, with a twinkle in his eye, 
" that ninety per cent of American ability sprang from New England, 
principally Massachusetts ; ninety per cent of that blossomed in and 
around Boston ; and of that ninety per cent, perhaps ninety per cent 
must be credited to Nahant." 

This Chinese devotion to the worship of his ancestors is the in- 
eradicable defect in Mr. Lodge's role of historian ; yet in his ardor 
to bepraise that twin of the Scotch-Irishman, the Anglo-Saxon, he 
flouts even the race of the Italian ancestor whose name he bears, 
— Cabot. 



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